Are Miley Cyrus' 15 minutes running out?

Miley Cyrus and her show Hannah Montana have been an inside joke with me and a few friends for awhile because we know a guy who is pushing thirty but adores her and considers her the next big Queen of pop music... going as far as to say she is the link and cross between Madonna and Lucille Ball. If it wasn't for the humor of that, I wouldn't even give her the time of day, but it's always been funny to me.

This past week, Miley and Eminem released new albums on the same day. While Eminem was expected to outsell her from the onset as his audience has proven to be more loyal and obsessed over the years, industry insiders and chart watchers expected her to still put up a respectable fight. According to Hits Daily Double, Eminem's album is expected to open with at least 600,000 copies, Miley? 110,000-125,000 copies and expected to open in third place behind last weeks #1 album by Drake.

Why the dip in popularity? Let's examine, shall we.

• Miley recently pulled the plug on her series Hannah Montana. While the fact she is pushing 18 and wanting out of a show she's been doing since she was 12 is understandable, she has taken the opportunity to bash her hit series in many interviews, coming off ingrateful and likely alienating many fans who fell in love with her from her sitcom.
• Her latest single Can't Be Tamed is sinking like a rock at radio and iTunes sales are sluggish compared to some of her earlier hits.
• After five years of being the girl next door from Disney that parents wouldn't mind their six year olds listening to, Miley has almost overnight tried to reinvent herself as a teen sexpot, similar to Britney Spears circa 2000-2001. This turns parents off while at the same time making the older audience she's aiming to win over laughing at how sudden her change was.
  

A few days ago I read an article comparing and contrasting her turn to "sex symbol" with that of Britney Spears a decade ago. Much like Miley, Britney got her start with Disney Channel, and although ...Baby One More Time was fairly suggestive, especially with the video (considering Britney was only sixteen and pushing a Lolita schoolgirl image), Britney was still able to appeal to little kids without parents being too worried. Instead of just overnight going from "good girl" to sex symbol, Britney evolved slowly through a number of videos and by the time she had her coming out party on the 2000 MTV VMA's with the skin-colored getup, the audience was ready and embraced the newly sexual Britney with open arms. With Miley, the sexy act seemed to come out of nowhere and she didn't give herself the bridge to transition from teen queen to sexy pop star and be taken seriously.

Another thing the audience must consider is that with the exceptions of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (and even in her case, the new Bionic album isn't selling as well as it should), most teen queens have a shelf life of a fruitfly. I remember being a kid in 1987 when Debbie Gibson and Tiffany emerged onto the scene, by 1990 Tiffany was already off the radar and Debbie was releasing her last sizable hit single with Anything Is Possible. They had their moment and the fans moved on to something new (although I am aware that Debbie and Tiffany have continued to make music in the years since). People have been so spoiled by the fact that Britney has been able to last a dozen years in the biz to forget that she was the exception, not the rule. Miley has been famous for nearly five years, and with Hannah Montana going off the air, could it be time for people to be moving on to the next teen queen the way that they abandoned Hilary Duff when Miley came onto the scene? If you want my opinion, Justin Bieber is the new teen princess of pop music, haha.

Watch Miley's homage to Britney here...


Do you think this is just a bump in the road or do you think her 15 minutes are winding down to make way for someone new.